What’s happened with 88 Films’ blu-ray releases of The Mercenary and Navajo Joe, both of which were scheduled for release today according to Amazon UK? Does anyone know? I pre-ordered The Mercenary back in January but, although Amazon have my order still listed as “arriving tomorrow” (I didn’t expect it today despite the release date since it’s a bank holiday here), they haven’t dispatched it yet, or taken any money, and 88 Films seem to have gone pretty f*cking quiet on both pictures. Have I missed a delay announcement or do they regularly miss their announce dates without explanation?

EDIT: Well! So far, 88 Films have managed to ignore my enquiries as to the status of The Mercenary and Navajo Joe on Twitter, Facebook and via email. They’re not answering their phone either. The quadruple brush-off! What a quality outfit.

FURTHER EDIT: A response from them via Facebook. Not much of a response, but I suppose I should be thankful they’ve deigned to respond at all:

FURTHER, FURTHER EDIT: I’ve had an email today.

There have been confidential reasons that these titles have had to be delayed but as things stand we still don’t know when until so it’s hard to make any promises.

These issues don’t apply to Django Kill at all and that will be released on it’s scheduled date no problem and will available from our webstore a good few weeks earlier.

Kino Lorber?! Those f*ckbums lock all their discs to region A, though! I already do a voodoo dance every morning as it is, in the hope that the Kino Lorber executives all develop explosive diarrhoea all over themselves. A plague on their houses, I say!

This is probably the way forward. I really should utilise Amazon Deutschland and the German release market far more than I do.

EDIT: And this is what I have done, just now. Cancelled my 88Films Mercenary order, and my pre-order of the 88Films Django Kill too while I was at it (I’ve got the Blue Underground blu anyway). If they ever pull their finger out and release these blus I may look again, if the reviews from my SWDB brethren are favourable. But I’m not impressed with the ignorance from them, not impressed at all.

I dunno really. Giddy on pre-order pre-emptiveness, maybe. A bit like that time I stuck a load of different absinthe fountains and fondue sets on my Amazon wish list. To this day, I can’t remember why I did that. I don’t even like absinthe! I did used to like amphetamines though, maybe that explains it.

Django Kill is a top, top favourite of mine though, and if there’d been a chance for a better copy or a more feature-packed disc or something, I wanted in. I may buy it yet, I just think I’ll wait until it’s out and someone else on here reports back on the product.